What is Mount Olympus?

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, and Homer's own poems do not agree on what it is: one passage calls it 'many-ridged' with a summit Zeus sits on, while another places the gods' true seat somewhere no wind, rain or snow ever reaches. At its northern foot the Macedonians built Dion, a sanctuary of Zeus Olympios where Philip II and Alexander the Great both offered sacrifice, at games a predecessor named Archelaus had instituted.

The facts

Also known as: Olympos
Principal cult sites: Dion

In short

In the Iliad, the gates of heaven that open onto "great heaven and Olympus" are kept by the Hours, and a few lines later Zeus is found sitting on "the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus" — a summit, not only a sky (5.749-754).
The Odyssey places the gods' true seat somewhere "neither shaken by winds nor ever wet with rain," where snow never falls at all — weather the real mountain does not keep (6.42-46).
Plato has Zeus lead "an army of gods and spirits, arrayed in eleven squadrons" who are counted among "the twelve great gods," while Hestia alone stays home — and the passage never names who fills the other places (Phaedrus 247a).
Diodorus names Dion outright only for Alexander, who sacrificed there in 334 BC at games for Zeus and the Muses that "Archelaüs, one of his predecessors, had instituted" (Library of History 17.16.3-4); a Macedonian Olympia Philip II held after taking Olynthus in 348 BC is the same festival unnamed by place, which Diodorus's own Loeb editors identify with Dion from an inscription (16.55.1).
The Greek Ministry of Culture's own record of the sanctuary at Dion cites two inscriptions found in its precinct — a letter of Philip V and a city decree of the late fourth century BC — that both direct their own placement "in the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus."
Dion's name is built on the old Greek word for heavenly, which Aeschylus already used as an epithet of Zeus himself — a name that announces the sanctuary before an inscription does.

The gates that open above the mountain

In the fifth book of the Iliad, Hera whips the horses and the gates of heaven groan open on their own hinges, gates the Hours keep, entrusted with “great heaven and Olympus” together, as if the two were one country. A few lines later Hera and Athena find Zeus sitting apart from the other gods “on the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus,” a mountain with a summit and ridges like any other (Iliad 5.749-754). The Odyssey describes a different Olympus. Athena withdraws there, to a seat “neither shaken by winds nor ever wet with rain,” where snow never falls and a white radiance hangs over a cloudless sky (Odyssey 6.42-46). That weather fits no mountain the Greeks had ever climbed, least of all the one the name usually meant.

The poems do not force those places into one geography. A god may sit on a recognisable summit in one scene and pass through guarded gates into an untouched divine realm in another. The name holds the physical mountain and a seat beyond ordinary weather at the same time.

How many gods, and which

Plato’s Phaedrus puts a number on the gods who hold Olympus, though not a cast list. Zeus drives out first, and “an army of gods and spirits, arrayed in eleven squadrons” follows him; Hestia alone stays behind in the house of the gods. Plato calls the ones who ride out “the twelve great gods” and their “leaders,” but he never says who they are (Phaedrus 247a). The word fixes a number of seats. It does not fix who sits in them.

The sanctuary Macedon built beneath it

At the northern foot of the mountain, on the coastal plain south of what is now Thessaloniki, the Macedonians built Dion. Diodorus names the place directly only once: Alexander, he writes, “made lavish sacrifices to the gods at Dium in Macedonia” in 334 BC, before he crossed to Asia, and held nine days of contests for Zeus and the Muses that “Archelaüs, one of his predecessors, had instituted” (Library of History 17.16.3-4). A generation earlier, in 348 BC, Diodorus records Philip II holding what looks like the same rite after the fall of Olynthus: “the Olympian festival to the gods… with magnificent sacrifices” and games, but without naming the place. Diodorus’s own Loeb editors identify it as the same Dium festival, from an inscription reading “into the sanctuary of the Olympian Zeus” (16.55.1). The Greek Ministry of Culture, which holds the site, records two further inscriptions found in the sanctuary’s own precinct, a letter of Philip V settling a boundary dispute and a city decree of the late fourth century BC. Both order their own text set up “in the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus,” which is how the ministry identifies the ground at all: no large-scale excavation has cleared it, and the identification rests on what the stones themselves say about where they were meant to stand.

What Dion’s name says

Dion carries the old Greek word dios, “heavenly,” the same adjective Aeschylus already uses for Zeus’s own plans (Prometheus Bound 619). A Macedonian who said the town’s name was already saying whose ground it was.

The inscriptions remove any need to infer a temple from the place-name alone. They identify the precinct as that of Olympian Zeus, while Diodorus records rulers sacrificing at its festival. Olympus remains both mountain and divine country in poetry; at Dion, Macedon gave the mountain’s Zeus a sanctuary on the ground beneath it.

Where to stand

Thessaloniki

Cities

On the northern foot of Olympus, some 80 kilometres south of Thessaloniki, the Macedonians built Dion, their own sanctuary of the mountain's god. Two inscriptions found in its precinct — a letter of Philip V and a city decree of the late fourth century BC — direct that they be set up in the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, and Diodorus records Alexander the Great sacrificing there in 334 BC, at games a predecessor named Archelaus had instituted, the same festival his editors trace back to a sacrifice of Philip II's a generation before.
Thessaloniki